


(when the sun comes up)

by apocalyvse



Category: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Background Character Death, F/M, LMAO, seriously there's a lot of background death, wyaddison if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26421283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocalyvse/pseuds/apocalyvse
Summary: And maybe, if he'd tried harder, if he’d spoken louder, the last time he saw Willa and all the times before that, if he’d tried to be a leader instead of standing down, things would have been different.By next week, there will be no more monsters that call Seabrook home.
Relationships: Wyatt Lykensen/Addison Wells
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	(when the sun comes up)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kokinu09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kokinu09/gifts).



> a prompt fill for our zombie mom; it was supposed to be based off the song 'cry wolf' by the girl and the dreamcatcher buuuuuut things got a little out of hand. hopefully this is acceptable anyway?

**I – THERE IS A WHISPER IN SEABROOK**

There is a whisper in Seabrook.

It lays on the sidewalk, and ripples through the air. It plasters itself to the shiny glass of their windows, hangs like banners from the streetlights. It carves holes in their chests like knives, poisoning their tongues and echoing red in their eyes.

_Fear._

“We’re going to the beach today,” Addison says over a late breakfast, the sun casting shafts of warm light through the open window. It’s the perfect day for the beach – warm summer weather, just enough of a breeze to stir the surface of the water, and busy enough that the vendors will be out and about, selling their wares right there on the sand. “Are you going to come?”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Wyatt asks, prodding at a bowl of cereal with his spoon.

“The old cheer team,” she informs him, leaning across the bench to fetch her coffee from her seat next to him. “Bree, Lacey, Sam, those guys.” She looks at him expectantly, her coffee half-raised to her lips.

Wyatt shifts in his seat. “I was going to go out to the woods today…” he says hesitantly.

“Oh.” Addison turns away, her lips curving downwards in disappointment. Wyatt pauses – and he’d promised, he’d really _promised_ himself that he would go out of town today, but-

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

She glances at him. “Nothing,” she says. “I just thought you’d want to come, that’s all. And the others wanted you to come too; Sam and Mickey will miss you.”

“I know,” Wyatt sighs. “But I haven’t been out to the den in almost a month. If I don’t go, Willa will-”

“You know you don’t _have_ to do anything for her anymore, right?” Addison cuts in, before he can make the case he’s been turning over and over in his head all week. “You left them for a reason, remember.”

Her hand reaches across the bench – he turns his so that their fingers can interlace, so that he can hold her, just for a second. “I know,” he promises, and tries to remember why he’d wanted to go to the woods even after he’d cut his ties with the pack. Any answer he can come up with seems feeble and wrong now.

“I still want to see her, though,” he tries anyway, barely managing to convince himself. “She’s my sister.”

“Go out to the woods today, then,” Addison says, and squeezes his hand.

 _Go to the woods,_ she says, but all he can hear is, _you left them for a reason_. All of a sudden, he can feel the sharp sting of his cheek wiped clean again, Willa’s claws biting his wrist, the pups ghosting after him, barely hidden by the trees, until he blinks and they are gone and he is alone.

The memories taste bitter on his tongue, biting at his mouth like he’s chewing sharp pine and stinging nettle. He swallows them like a stone.

“No,” he says, . “I’ll come to the beach. They can wait one more day.”

A broad smile reaches across Addison’s face, warm as the sunshine and openly joyous, in a way Willa never was. “I love you,” she reminds him, and then her hand slips from his as she goes to wash her cup in the sink.

\---

He always forgets just how loud this group of Addison’s friends are.

He’s already overwhelmed before they even make it to the beach, hanging back behind most of them as they walk along the street, such a rambling group that they take up most of the sidewalk. Sam and Mickey talk around him, hanging back just far enough that he can pretend to be listening to the conversation even though his thoughts are a million miles away.

Addison is in the middle of the pack, so far away and so well surrounded by the other girls that he can barely see her, let alone speak to her. Not that he wants to speak. He’s barely sure what he would have to say if he did.

It’s a beautiful day, bright and lively, the salty taste of the sea hanging in the air before you can even see it, but he can’t quite find a way to be absorbed in the chatter and show of the group, no matter how much he wants to sink into it. The mountains still loom over the town, even here at the edge of the world – if he turns, he can spot the peak under which the den is dug – and every time his eyes stray to them, he feels the guilt renewed, a pit in his stomach yawning wider and wider.

But this was why he had left, wasn’t it? The guilt, the

He could never do anything right. It’s not surprising that he couldn’t make up his mind right either.

And then there are the eyes, which follow him everywhere he goes. They’re following him now, turning to see who is so rowdy, and then doing a double-take when they spot him at the back of the pack, the flash of white hair at his brow giving him away.

He can almost pass for human sometimes, if he puts the moonstone away and smiles without his teeth and keeps his head held low. People in Seabrook know him already though, know his kind and their perceived crimes, just like they know the zombies they’ve locked away in that giant cage they call a town, where they don’t have to see them. _Should put the wolf in with the zombies too_ , they whisper sometimes, or, _shouldn’t it be on a leash?_ Or they’ll worry, _it’s going to kill us all,_ or, _she shouldn’t be feeding it anything but vegetables_ , or they’ll turn to Addison right in front of him, and say, _no pets allowed inside_.

He can hear them now, his ears sharp enough to pick up the hushed voices that mumble to each other as he passes by. If he concentrated, he could hear the words they whisper to each other, but he doesn’t need to. _Ignore them_ , Addison would say if she was beside him, her hand warm as it slides into his. _We don’t need them to like us, as long as we have each other_. And then she would flash them the sweetest smile she could muster, and walk on with her head held higher than he would ever dare.

When he thinks about it like that, all at once, he wonders why he doesn’t go back to the forest. But then he remembers Willa, angry, claws outstretched, and Addison, kind and forgiving and lost in the world in her own way, and around his thoughts go again, caught in a never-ending circle with no resolution to be found.

**II – THERE IS A BODY IN THE WOODS**

There is a body in the woods.

It’s the headline on the front page of the newspaper that day, a man - middle-aged, well-known, _human_ – found slaughtered in the dry riverbed in the forest ( _so close to the den, too close to the den_ ). Chest torn apart, ribs scattered around him, heart ripped from his chest and nowhere to be found.

It takes Wyatt several seconds to put the paper down on the table without ripping it.

“What’s wrong?” Addison asks as he plants his shaking hands on the table too and reminds himself to breathe. When he doesn’t reply, she reaches for the paper, and spends several seconds herself staring at the article, her face slowly growing paler.

“Oh,” she breathes in understanding. All he can do is nod. “This is…this is horrible.”

“I know,” he says, his jaw stiff, and runs his fingers through his hair. “And they’re – they’re going to blame the wolves for this. It was so far out in the forest, so close to the-”

His mouth snaps shut before he can let the word _den_ slip past his lips. He can’t risk saying it out loud – he can’t ever, _ever,_ tell anyone where it is. It is best to just always pretend he doesn’t know. It’s safer that way.

“Would any of them…do this?” Addison is hesitant to ask, looking up at him with wide, worried eyes like she’s afraid he might snap at her for suggesting such a thing.

“No,” is all he says though, firm, sure. “They don’t like humans coming into the woods, but they wouldn’t risk killing them. And if…if they did, this isn’t how they’d…do it.”

If there’s one thing he’s sure of, it’s that this is not the work of a wolf.

The story holds Seabrook’s attention for the next week, every day bringing some fresh update on what they take delight in labelling ‘the most gruesome case ever seen in Seabrook’. There is evidence that it was the wolves, then rumours of rogue zombies escaping into the forest from behind their locked gates, then a council meeting to discuss curfews and new fences around the forest and anti-monster strategies that get the whole town up on their toes.

Through articles, community discussions, and public announcements, Wyatt reads with an ever-increasing feeling of dread. He can’t help but notice that, in all the theories that are proposed, wolves or zombies, not once does anyone ask if it could have been a human who did this.

“Maybe we should leave Seabrook for a while,” he suggests in passing one day, when Addison brings in a paper that announces compulsory tracking for all zombies. It fills him with a nasty sense of unease, one that turns his stomach and makes him push away the plate of food he’d just sat down with, his appetite gone.

“Do you think they’ll think that you did it?” Addison asks, her fingers playing anxiously with the corner of the paper. Her eyes are piercing. He studies the grain of the wood in the table to avoid them.

“I think they’re coming after all the monsters they can find,” he says quietly. “I don’t know if we’re safe here, with all this going on.”

“But you’re not a monster, Wyatt,” she claims. He looks up just long enough to raise his eyebrows at her, like he doesn’t believe her. “It’ll be okay,” she insists anyway. “My dad knows you wouldn’t do this. And anyway, it’ll only look suspicious if we leave right now for no reason.”

Wyatt’s mouth twists in displeasure, but he doesn’t argue, just looks away again and tells himself she’s right. _It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay._ He says the words to himself enough that they echo in his ears even in his dreams, where he runs through the dark woods with his heart in his throat and the pounding of feet chasing after him…

The next day, there’s a knock at the door.

Addison answers it, her grip on the doorhandle so tight her knuckles start to turn white as she greets whoever is on the doorstep. Wyatt can’t see them from where he sits in the back room, but he can hear them. “ _We’re looking for Wyatt Lykensen_ ,” they say, and his heart sinks.

They should have _left_. He should have left. What would have been worse, facing Willa, or whatever these men have come for?

“Why?” Addison asks, feigning innocence. He can hear the waver that pulls at her voice, the shiver of fear that runs down her spine – and yet she stands between him and them, brave as the daylight.

There’s a soft rustle of paper being unfolded.

“Anti-monster law sixty-two; all monsters in Seabrook residences must carry a tracker at all times.”

“Wyatt isn’t a zombie,” Addison says in confusion (when did she get so good at this, at the lying and the fake smiles, at acting like she hasn’t got a clue?).

“Anti-monster laws cover zombies _and_ werewolves, Miss Wells,” the man points out. “And the longer you stall, the more reason I have to believe yours might have been involved in a murder. So you can either let us do our jobs and follow the law, or we can take you and the dog downtown with the zombies.”

There’s a long silence where Wyatt can’t hear anything at all.

Addison steps aside.

“Don’t hurt him,” she requests as the men enter the house, so quiet that her voice is barely audible.

“We won’t do anything he doesn’t give us a reason to do,” one assures her (if such a sentiment can be called reassuring), and then they find Wyatt in the back room.

He stands as they enter, three men dressed all in silver and grey. They fan across the room, blocking every possible exit before he can even consider running. His eyes slide to Addison, hovering uncertainly in the doorway behind them. Her eyes are wide, and scared, her mouth half-open like she might say something; but she doesn’t say a word.

“Just cooperate, wolf,” the man that had spoken to her at the door says to him now.

Wyatt looks at Addison again. _It’ll be okay_ , she’d said just a day ago. He swallows hard and offers them his arm without a fight.

 _It was only a little pain_ , Addison sighs when they are gone. _Now we’re safe_. But she won’t touch the raised lump of the tracker where it is hiding under his skin, and she doesn’t feel the heat that radiates from his arm the next day, not until it is red and sore and swollen and no doctor who knows them will come within ten feet of him.

**III – THERE IS A FIRE BEHIND THE WALL**

There is a fire behind the wall.

It starts in the evening, just after the sun has gone down. They don’t hear the screaming from their house, buried deep in the quiet streets of Seabrook, but they hear the sirens as police and fire trucks speed down the streets, towards a town they don’t technically serve.

Wyatt doesn’t wake until the smoke drifts across Seabrook and through his open window, dry and ashy and reminiscent of a wildfire that once blazed through the wolves’ forest when he was a child.

He wakes up gasping and groggy, sprawled on his stomach atop the soft cotton sheets of his bed. He’s not sure what day it is, or why he is asleep when the moon is barely in the sky; he’s not sure of much, really, let alone why the stars are botted out by smoke, or why there is a red glow filling the otherwise dark room. His head is pounding and his skin is hot, his arm aching, and yet he shivers as he raises his head from the soft blanket he’d buried his face into, cold like he’s been lying face-down in a bank of snow.

He wants to fall back asleep almost immediately, his eyes already trying to drift shut, but the smoke, the distant memory of the last time he’d encountered a fire of that scale, keeps him awake. He struggles clumsily to his feet, his head spinning and his heart pounding, and staggers to the door, barely staying upright as he walks straight into Addison’s dresser halfway and bounces off of it with a clatter loud enough

She is there waiting when he opens the door, appearing as if by magic from the dark hall to steady him before his legs can collapse underneath him.

“Wyatt!” she exclaims, and even though her voice is just short of a whisper, it booms in the back of his head like someone has made a drum out of his skull. “What are you doing? Go back to bed, you need to-”

“ _Smoke_ ,” he croaks, from a throat too dry to speak through. His tongue runs over the cracks in his lips, but his mouth is just as parched – he realises then, that he is desperately thirsty, and hungry too, but he forgets again the moment he breathes in the dry, crackling air from outside that fills the room, the smoke that gets thicker and thicker with no respite.

“It’s okay,” Addison assures him, guiding him gently back to bed. “It’s not going to hurt us.”

“W-where-?” He pulls against her, stopping so that he can rub at his eyes and then stare out the window. The sky stares back at him, roiling, low clouds of ash and smoke glowing an eerie red in the west.

“In Zombietown,” she tells him. “There was a protest, remember? The zombies wouldn’t follow the law about the trackers, and people got mad…dad said it was someone from Seabrook who started the fire…”

Wyatt stares with renewed horror at the red glow of the sky, the smoke that clouds the streets. A wildfire like that was bad enough in the forest, where there are lakes and caves and barren hollows to find shelter in, but to be trapped by the four walls that surround Zombietown, stuck in the middle of its tight urban sprawl and all-too-flammable houses…

He can’t imagine the horror, the hopelessness. He can’t picture what might be left standing by morning.

Addison shuts the window, stuffs a towel across the gap at the top to stop the smoke from coming in. It’s too late; the room is full of it already, the smell sinking into every surface it touches. It will take weeks for it to fade.

“Come on, Wyatt,” she says gently, tugging at his arm again. This time, he follows without argument, trying to blink away the image of the red sky. “It’s better downstairs. Come and sleep.”

The rest of the night is a blur, a fever dream he can’t escape.

**IV – THERE IS A KNIFE ON THE TABLE**

There is a knife on the table.

It sits in front of him, innocent enough, accompanied by a pale fork, their ends studded in pearl. Its edge is dull, its handle rounded and smooth, and it matches with the plates and crockery spread across the table, all shining softly under the dining room light.

He doesn’t have to touch it to know what it is made of. To know what the entire set is made of.

“I thought, since it’s our first dinner with Wyatt,” Addison’s mother, Missy, says around her tight smile, running her fingers over her own cutlery. “We could use the old silverware. It’s been sitting in the cupboard for _so long_.”

“It’s an old family collection,” Dale adds, turning to Wyatt. His Z-Patrol badge glitters on the breast of his jacket, like a label that says _I should know better_. “Addison’s great, great grandfather mined the silver and made the set himself, right here in Seabrook. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Wyatt sees Addison across the table, her eyes wide and pleading. She’d desperately wanted this to go well; he’d promised to go along with whatever they said, to keep out of arguments, to avoid stepping on their toes. Not that he really _needed_ to promise anything; the thought of sitting down with the mayor and the chief of the Zombie Patrol, two people who could walk an army into his family’s forest and destroy them all, was terrifying enough.

Even if he could forget the tension between Seabrook and the wolves, they’d passed by the still-smouldering rubble of Zombietown on the way here. It was hard to forget that this pastel pair, with their strained smiles and silver dishes, had sat back and watched while the zombies were all but eliminated just a few weeks ago.

“Yes,” he replies slowly, and tries not to meet Dale’s eyes for too long. “Beautiful.”

Missy looks pleased. Dale turns to ask Addison something, and they fall into the blessed neutrality of small talk without Wyatt as they serve themselves dinner. If they notice the way that his skin stings and burns when he picks up his fork, or that he pulls his sleeve up to cover most of his hand, they don’t mention it.

He listens quietly, picking at his food when he can stand to pick up the knife and fork. His fingers sting, and then they feel like they might blister and pop, or like smoke might start rising from them if he holds on any longer, and then they finally go numb. He tries not to look at the red, angry skin when he lets go of the silver, or to think about how much it will hurt in the morning.

He focuses on Addison instead, on how her face lights up when they asks about her job, her friends and her hobbies, and how she relaxes into her seat, comfortable here in her childhood home. She hasn’t been here since he’d drawn her away, hasn’t seen her parents since their last argument a year or more ago – she’d been miserable that day, and for weeks afterwards, he remembers, but she’d let him stay anyway, and now here they are…

His fingers begin to burn. Carefully, he puts down the fork and picks up his glass instead, trying to soothe his burnt and broken skin with its cool surface.

“Do you mind if I use the bathroom?” Addison asks, and the glass nearly cracks in his grip.

“Of course, dear,” Missy replies. Addison offers him a smile as she gets up; _you’ll be okay,_ it promises. _It will only be a minute_. He doesn’t feel any less afraid of being left here alone.

The moment she leaves the room, both of her parent’s eyes turn to him.

Wyatt puts his glass down before he can break it, his hand trembling. “So,” Dale says awkwardly, a stiff smile on his face. “Wyatt. Some bad business with the wolves this week, isn’t it?”

Wyatt frowns. “Bad business?” he questions.

“You haven’t seen the news?” Dale asks. Wyatt shakes his head; he hasn’t seen anything all week, or really at all since the fire. It was all anti-monster, nothing worth reading and most of it untrue anyway. Addison had suggested he stop reading it, if it was only going to ruin his day, and so he had.

“There’s been sightings in the forest,” Dale continues, his smile fading. “Of big groups of werewolves, gathering around Seabrook. And, well…there have been threats made too. Zombie Patrol have been out several times, but no one can make contact with-”

“Dale!” Missy scolds him. “Must you really talk about work at the table? Look at the poor boy, he doesn’t want to hear all about your-”

“No, it’s okay,” Wyatt says, before she can say anything more. “I just…didn’t know there was anything going wrong with the – with the wolves.”

“Yes, well, you’d know what they’re like,” Dale says. “Having…spent some time with them. They’re very hard to get along with, if you know what I mean. We can’t even get near them.”

He stares at Wyatt expectantly.

Wyatt clears his throat. “They…they don’t like outsiders,” he offers tentatively in agreement. “Or, um…humans. Wolves are loyal to wolves.”

 _Except for you,_ Willa’s voice hisses in the back of his mind, bitter and angry. He can imagine her, stalking through the woods with her pack, leading humans astray in the deepest wilds or chasing them back to Seabrook empty-handed. No mercy, that’s Willa. No tact, no careful words, just an iron fist and that hunger for revenge that she’s carried her entire life.

“Outsiders,” Dale muses, tapping a finger against his chin. “Interesting. So if we had someone that they know, someone that would know how to find them…”

His eyes slide to Wyatt, lit up with the spark of an idea. “You wouldn’t be willing to help us out, would you?”

Wyatt freezes. “U-uh…um…” he stutters, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He tries to imagine going back into the forest, asking Willa to stand down. “I don’t think-”

“We could really use your help,” Dale adds, trying desperately to convince him. “The wolves are getting too close to town, people are feeling threatened, and if we can’t convince them to stand down…” He shakes his head. “After what happened to Zombietown…”

Wyatt’s stomach drops. The fire, the heat, the smoke…the wolves running through the dry woods until they can’t run any further, the zombies left to rot in the rubble of their homes. Humans marching down the road, rifles and silver knives in their hands, like the stories of old that are written on the den’s walls.

“Think about it,” Dale says, and offers Wyatt a smile. “Come by the station tomorrow if you decide to do it.”

Addison returns before Wyatt can reply, fiddling with the braid in her hair as she enters the room. Their eyes meet across the table, and her mouth half-opens as if to ask him what has happened – but then Missy jumps to her feet and she turns away, distracted.

“Well, it’s getting late,” Missy says as Dale stands too. Wyatt rises slowly, using his hands sparingly. “You two will probably be wanting to head home, won’t you?”

Addison glances at Wyatt. He holds her gaze as long as he can, begging, _praying_ that she will agree to leave. “We probably should,” she replies, and he almost slumps in relief. “It was nice to see you though, mum. And dad.”

Missy makes a noise that sounds almost like a sob, and throws her arms around her daughter, like she isn’t the one who threw her out of the street and refused to have anything to do with her for all this time. Dale’s eyes remain fixed on Wyatt; his skin crawls under his observation, the feeling of being sized up like a piece of meat.

“Think about what I said, Wyatt,” he says and steps forwards, offering him a hand to shake. Wyatt takes it, trying not to wince at Dale’s firm grip on his burnt and blistered fingers.

“I will,” he promises, his voice wavering uncontrollably, and then he escapes to Addison’s side, hands hidden firmly in his pockets.

\---

“That wasn’t so bad,” Addison comments as they enter the safety of their own home, dropping her keys on the hallstand and flicking on the lights. Wyatt elbows the door closed and flicks the lock with the tip if his thumb, flinching as it presses on the tender edge of one of the burns. “Don’t you think, Wyatt? I thought they’d be absolutely horrible, but they actually tried to be _nice_ for once.”

“Could’ve been worse,” Wyatt mumbles, noncommittal, and looks down at his hands. His skin is burnt red and black all the way down to his wrists, bubbled into blisters or simply split and burnt away, the sores open and weeping. Even his sleeves hadn’t saved his palms from damage; the silver has burnt through the soft material of his shirt and seared the calloused skin right down to his wrist.

“What’s wrong?” Addison asks, and then gasps when she turns around. He looks up, but she has already crossed the room, her hands curling gently around his forearms to steady his shaking hands. “What-?”

“Silver,” he bites back gently, and then hisses in pain as she gently prods one of the blisters on his right hand.

“Oh my god,” she breathes. “I’m so sorry, Wyatt, I forgot – I didn’t think it would-”

“It’s okay,” he tells her, and then again. “It’s okay.” If there was a time when he was capable of being angry at her, it has passed long ago. “It doesn’t matter, it’s not that bad, it’s-”

“No,” she insists, her grip on his arm tightening. “No, come with me. I’m sorry.”

She leads him to their kitchen, dark except for the light from the hall, and stands him by the sink, his hands under the running water while she rummages through the cabinets for their first aid kit.

“I wish we could go to the hospital,” she whispers to herself, quiet enough that he thinks he is not supposed to hear it. _My fault_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t say it, because she is busy again, reaching into the back of a drawer for the things she needs.

There, in the half-light, as midnight draws on, he sits at the table as she pieces his hands back together, bit by bit.

“I have to go to the den tomorrow,” he says as she clears the table, his voice as soft as the light that filters in from the hallway.

Addison freezes, and then turns to face him, her expression one of surprise. “What are you talking about?” she asks, like he’s crazy, or like he’s trying to pull a trick on her.

Wyatt takes a breath, filling his lungs like he might breathe in courage or wisdom too. “The pack are being too aggressive,” he says. “I have to go and convince them to stand down, or…or the same thing that happened to the zombies is going to happen to them too.”

“But, Wyatt-” She stops, her face screwed up like she doesn’t know what to say, and then she sits back down in her chair in front of him. She’s so close that their knees touch, her hands half-reaching to take him, until she sees the bandages and stops short, remembering the silver, the burns.

“It’s not safe for you, Wyatt,” she says. “You haven’t been out there in months, and Willa-”

“I _know_ ,” he huffs, and then retracts, squeezing his eyes closed. It is the pain, from his hands that makes him snap, the exhaustion of the day, the infection he’s still not really over. That glimpse of Zombietown from this afternoon and the promise of the same fate coming for the wolves. He’s tired and he’s anxious and he’s probably making the wrong decisions, and she is just trying to help. She is just trying to keep him safe.

“I have to try,” he says, softer now. “She won’t listen to the humans, but she might listen to me…and if I don’t go, and they die…”

 _That guilt is too much to bear_.

Addison slumps in her seat, her eyes turned to the floor.

“I’m scared,” she says in a whisper. “I’m scared she’ll kill you. Or take you away.”

Wyatt leans forward, his hand resting gently on top of hers. “So am I,” he confesses, and for the first time in a long time, he finds the courage to wish that things were different.

**V – THERE IS A MEETING IN THE WOODS**

There is a meeting in the woods.

Wyatt goes alone to find her, climbing softly down the old, dry riverbed into land that rings more and more familiar the further into the wild that he gets. He goes with bandaged hands and an ache in his chest for a home he hadn’t realised he still missed, his moonstone hidden carefully under his collar for fear she will try to grab it. He doesn’t dare howl to call the pack to him. He doubts they would answer him anyway.

Not that there is any need to call them to him. He can feel them watching him as he walks, can hear the rustle of bushes and the whisper of disturbed pine needles underfoot as they tail him. They know he is here, just as he knows they are surrounding him.

He’s not surprised when he rounds a large boulder and comes face-to-face with Willa on the other side, her arms crossed and her eyes glowing a distinct, dangerous yellow.

He rocks back on his heels at the sight of her, fear making his heart leap into his throat. She doesn’t move, just stares at him like he is barely worth her attention, her face impassive.

“You look like shit,” she says eventually, when it is clear he will not be the first to speak.

“You look…” _Good. Angry. Powerful_. A dozen words come to mind, but none of them spill from his mouth.

She frowns at him. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks, and for a moment he thinks – he _dreams_ that he hears a note of concern in her voice. “You’re _different_. What have they done to you?”

Wyatt hesitates, confused, trying to figure out what she means. “No one has done…anything to me…” he answers slowly, like he’s testing the waters to see if this is the answer she’s looking for.

Willa recoils, snapping back to cold indifferent. Wrong answer. He almost cringes.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says instead, her voice turning hard. “You can’t just disappear for months and then walk back in whenever you feel like it. You were barely welcome before, and now the pack is-”

“I came to warn you,” he says over the top of her, all in one breath.

The look she gives him at being cut off is almost enough to make his heart stop. “ _Warn_ me?” she says mockingly. “About what? If it’s the humans that keep wandering in here looking for the den, I already know. I’m not _blind_.”

“It’s not just one or two humans,” he explains in a rush, trying to get all the words out before she dismisses him. “There’s a whole army of them coming to kill you, unless you disappear back into the forest and stop… _aggravating_ them.”

She stares at him, and then tips her head back and laughs, so loud that a flock of startled birds take flight from a nearby tree, flapping noisily away up the valley. “That’s why you’re here?” she asks when she’s finished. “As their message boy? That’s _so much worse_ than I thought.”

“I’m just trying to-to-”

She holds up a hand, and he falters, his voice sputtering and dying in his throat. “I don’t need a tame dog to come and tell me what the humans think I need to know,” she tells him, her voice as hard as the mountain rock. “If I did, I’d get a labrador. But since you’re here, you can go back and tell your masters; there are five packs gathered in these woods, and they all want a piece of the humans that took the moonstone from us.” Her eyes cut into him like a knife, sweeping him from top to bottom. “They can bring any army they like. They’re going to die either way.”

Wyatt cringes at her words. All he can see is the mental image of the forest on fire, or the forest filled with blood, no matter which side it is from. “I-I-” he tries to speak, but the words won’t come out; he is stuck, his tongue paralysed, his feet tied to the ground he’d once hunted on, long before he ever knew any humans or the rift that now gapes even wider between him and his sister.

Willa is unapologetic. “You used to be _Beta_ ,” she sneers, mostly to herself, and then waves a hand at him as if to shoo him away. “Run along, Wyatt. Your handlers will be missing you soon. You wouldn’t want your precious humans to wander into the woods looking for you.”

He forces himself to meet her eyes, to hold her gaze even as she cuts him to ribbons with the glare she gives him. “I’m not a pet dog, Willa,” he tells her defiantly, though his voice shakes and his eyes flicker downwards at the end, unable to hold her gaze any longer. “I’m your _brother_. I came because I wanted to-”

“I don’t have a brother,” she interrupts, her voice calm but colder than any winter night. “My brother died the night he lost our little sister. You’re just a _ghost_ , you’re just…nothing. No one. I wish you would just-”

“Willa-” he pleads, but she is already shaking her head, her moonstone bright and angry at the nape of her neck.

“Forget my name,” she snaps. “Forget the pack, and the den, and everything. It’s not like you care about us anyway. Go and be human, like you want to be, and don’t ever show your face here again.”

“Willa-”

“ _Go_!” she roars, and she steps towards him, her teeth bared.

Wyatt flees.

**VI – THERE IS A SHOT IN THE NIGHT**

There is a shot in the night.

It is a calm, clear evening, pitch black for the new moon but temperate and still enough that sound carries all the way from the mountains to the sea, unfettered by the thick forest or the sprawl of the town at the base of the valley.

Wyatt jerks upright when the first gunshot cracks through the sky, faint but clear. His breath shoots in and out of his chest, and heart races, so loud that he almost misses the second, third, fourth shots, all in quick succession.

Next to him, Addison sits up too, rubbing at tired, almost-asleep eyes. “Are you okay?” she asks over the top of two more gunshots, and then a distant howl echoes off the mountains, short and sharp and crying for help.

Wyatt shakes his head wordlessly and lifts a trembling hand to push his hair out of his eyes. “It’s happening,” he tells her, and nothing more. There isn’t anything else to say, and nothing he can do; he can only sit and listen to the bullets fire and the wolves howl, and wonder emptily if there was a way this could have ended differently.

And maybe it could have, if he’d tried harder. If he’d spoken louder, the last time he saw Willa and all the times before that, if he’d tried to be a leader instead of standing down, if Wanda hadn’t disappeared into the night years ago, never seen again…

If he’d not been so afraid of dying, if he’d stood up when the humans told him to sit down, if he hadn’t eaten his dinner off a _silver plate_. But it is too late now, and by next week there will be no more monsters that call Seabrook home.

It ends sometime in the early morning, when the night is darkest and coldest, when even the wolves would usually retire.

Addison’s phone pings softly, the screen lighting up the otherwise dark room. Not quite asleep, she stirs, turning to pick the phone up from her bedside table and unlock it. The light of the screen makes her face glow softly in the darkness, shining off her eyes as her face slowly falls, deeply troubled.

“What is it?” he asks, even though he’s almost afraid to know.

For a moment, she is silent, the long absence of words almost as damning as anything she might say instead. Wyatt waits, barely daring to draw in a breath for fear she might tell him something that will steal it from his chest quicker than he can get it back.

Slowly, she turns the phone to face him, her hand shaking like she’s afraid of what he might do.

He can only stare at the screen, and the photo that she’s been tagged in. It’s recent, a blurry, dark shot of three men with rifles, lit up by the flash of a phone’s camera. They stand all in a row, rifles in their hands or slung over their shoulder, their smiles wide to show all of their teeth. They’re stood in a forest clearing, in front of the large, gaping entrance of a cave…in front of…

He can barely hear the sob that rips from his throat at the sight of it, these humans, the first ones to visit the den. The _last_.

Addison drops the phone, reaching out to him instead. Her hands are soft on his skin, comforting words slipping from her mouth – but he turns away, out of reach. She can’t help him now. She can’t help any of them, and neither can he; Willa would die before the humans got to the den, and if Willa was dead, then the pack would be too, and that meant that they were all gone, that he is the only one left, that-

 _They’re gone_ , the words echo in his head, over and over and over _. They’re gone, they’re gone, they’re_ -

_Gone._

**Author's Note:**

> please remember to leave a comment! for more of my work or to send me some prompts, visit my tumblr @zombiedadjokes!


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